Diversity Richmond is among the Richmond organizations advocating for the area's LGBTQ+ community. (File photo)
The Virginia General Assembly has passed numerous pieces of legislation protecting LGBTQ rights during this year’s session, and the city of Richmond and area corporations have publicly recognized Pride Month on a wider scale than ever, but there is still work to be done, local activists say.
Since the beginning of March, Gov. Ralph Northam has signed several protections affecting the LGBTQ community into law, including SB 1138, which among other provisions repeals the crime of donating blood, organs and tissues by people infected with HIV; HB 2132, which bans the gay and trans panic defense for murder; and HB 2130, which will make Virginia the first Southern state to create an LGBTQ advisory board.
“A lot of changes happened very quickly, so we now have active LGBTQ nondiscrimination policies at the state level, and Richmond has done a lot of work internally to update its practices and procedures to become more LGBTQ inclusive, but I think that there's still a big disconnect between what's happening at a policy level and how people's lives are being impacted by it,” James Millner, manager of Diversity Richmond’s Virginia Pride program, says. “Just because we have a law that says it's illegal to discriminate against somebody in public accommodation doesn't mean that LGBTQ people still aren't treated differently in those spaces.”
Zakia McKensey, founder and executive director of Nationz Foundation, also feels there needs to be a higher enforcement of discrimination policies.
She says the Virginia Values Act, signed in April 2020, which “prohibits discrimination in public and private employment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity,” is great, but there needs to be a deeper look into what accountability really means when it comes to discrimination in public accommodation, particularly housing.
Nationz provides LGBTQ people with free testing for HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), as well as access to support groups and care services. The foundation also has two mobile testing units in Richmond to provide HIV testing and a food pantry in more locations.
McKensey decided to create Nationz after she heard the concerns of individuals she served during her time with the Richmond City Health District, she says.
“Along with understanding the needs of the LGBTQ community and specific needs of the trans community and the lack of access to services for that community, I decided to take a leap of faith and create Nationz and implement programming that provided a holistic approach to combat the social determinants of health that affect this community,” she says.
In addition to SB 1138, Virginia passed another bill related to HIV, HB 1805, which was created to ensure that older people who have HIV or are LGBTQ have access to adequate services.
“I think that there’s still work to do around HIV and decriminalization,” McKensey says. “Due to the background science, we know that individuals who are undetectable are not transmittable.”
HB 1932 is a failed bill that, if passed, would have prevented foster and adoption agencies in Virginia from refusing to place children in LGBTQ homes because of religious or moral convictions.
Jewish Family Services, a care, counseling and adoption organization in Richmond, places an emphasis on LGBTQ adoption.
Having worked with LGBTQ individuals in the 1990s, the organization has seen how much more supportive the city and people of Richmond have become over the years, Teresa Birchett, JFS adoption supervisor, says.
“For our families that we work with, we’ve seen that they get matched, we're able to help them build their families through adoption, and we have more and more LGBTQ+ families calling us that want to pursue adoption,” Birchett says. “It's really grown over the years, and I think that there's a lot more support for our diverse families in the community.”
The city of Richmond, and many companies and organizations within the city, has shown public support for Pride Month this year. City Hall is flying a Pride flag for the entirety of June for the first time, Dominion Energy lit up its building in rainbow colors, the Richmond Kickers hosted a Pride night and more. These shows of support are important, Millner says.
“While symbolism can often be performative, I think it has a role, and I think symbols matter in this instance,” he says. “For example, news coverage of Pride Month and Pride activities and things like that, it's good and it's balanced, and it treats [Pride] like it is part of the fabric of this community, which is exactly what we are.”
While Virginia has dramatically increased its enactment of legislation that protects the LGBTQ community, Millner says it’s essential to remember that the fight for equality isn’t over, especially if the General Assembly swings Republican in this year’s election.
“I think we still have to recognize that, while we've made great strides, that we don't give up,” he says. “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was landmark legislation that supposedly leveled the playing field, but we are still wrestling with it today. So, you never go too far in ensuring that you are protecting people's rights to live authentically to be themselves — to work, to contribute to society in meaningful ways — you can never ever go too far in granting people that ability."
